 Born Michio Kawachi (first name, surname)
in Osaka, Japan, as the 15th generation in the lineage of the famous 16th century Osaka smith Kawachi-no-kami Kunisuke.
Kawachi's
father couldn't become a swordsmith because of the war and the
following post-war 7-year period that forbid the very existence of
swords.
He entered apprenticeship under the late "Living
National Treasure" Miyairi Akihira 宮入昭平 (later changed to Yukihira 行平)
in 1966, after graduating from the Faculty of Law at Kansai University.
He built his own forge in Eastern Nara prefecture after becoming
independent in 1972. In 1984, in order to further his studies of the
Bizen tradition, he moved his entire family for a while to apprentice
under the late LNT Sumitani Masamine 隅谷正峯.
He was granted the
status of Mukansa, or "without supervision" early in his career by
these standards in 1987. This is now granted to those who have received
a Special Prize at least ten times (less in those days). Nowadays there
are about 25 mukansa swordsmiths in Japan, including Kawachi. He was
also granted the status of Intangible Cultural Asset, or commonly known
as "Living Treasure", by the village of Higashi-Yoshino, where he
resides, in 1989, and then by the prefecture of Nara in 2005.
His book The Art of the Japanese Sword: As Taught by the Experts, was published in 2001 first
in Japanese, and soon after translated into English. The original
version sold over 15 000 copies in Japan, quite a success for such a
specialized topic!
In the past 20 years, his career took
interesting and challenging twists and turns. He became involded in
researching the fabrication methods of the earliest japanese swords of
the 5th and 6th centuries, he was invited twice to Lithuania
to give a public demonstration, his skills at calligraphy got him an
exhibition and his schedule is regularly punctuated by exhibits, TV and
printed media visits and conferences.
He
lives slowly but intensely in the remote backcountry of Nara prefecture
with his wife and his oldest son, who has just returned to the family
house (with wife and kid!) after having completed his apprenticeship in
the Miyairi clan.
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